Published 4:00 am, Friday, July 23, 2004

He's done stand-up, radio and television, so what could possibly be next for social satirist and comedian Johnny Steele?

A one-man show, of course, where he can croon about his favorite subjects: fast food, Vegas, fad diets, the war and George W. Bush's half-baked policies.

Tired of the current stand-up scene where Steele might, say, follow a comic who spends 15 minutes talking about masturbation, he says the one-man show "Bits and Pieces: An evening with Johnny Steele" will appeal to an audience that appreciates a more intellectual approach to humor.

"This is a solo work in progress," said Steele, 44, from his East Bay home, the exact location of which he prefers not to reveal, with JuJu and Bosco, his rescued Chihuahuas, on his lap. "Think of it as Al Franken, except not quite so Jewish, meets David Sedaris, except not so gay, meets Paula Poundstone, except not so masculine!"

Born Johnny Anthony Lopez in Pittsburg, the half-Spanish, half-Italian comic changed his last name to pay homage to the town's steel mill.

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He attended Los Medanos College in his hometown, played football, and attended St. Mary's College as a sociology major before stumbling into comedy around 1984. Steele won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition in 1992 while working clubs throughout the Bay Area. Later, he filled radio host Alex Bennett's slot on "Live 105" FM, the San Francisco-based rock station, and co-hosted "The Show" with Susan Blake on KRON/Bay TV. Steele has put in 20 years of telling jokes at top comedy clubs across the country and abroad, with a recent three-week tour in April to 15 cities in the Netherlands.

He's had his big moments in front of large audiences. When actor Will Smith failed to appear on stage at the 2000 California Music Awards. Steele took over before thousands and improvised with, "Will couldn't be here tonight, so on his behalf I'd like to accept this award and apologize for 'The Wild, Wild West.' "

Now he says he's ready to try out the monologue format in smaller theaters.

Will Durst of San Francisco, a political comedian and Steele's friend of 18 years, calls the monologue form "a magical transportation to a mystical world where equality and justice reign."

Said Steele: "The kind of stand-up that I'm interested in is best served in smaller venues where people come to see only you. ...There's an intimacy there. You can slow it down and be quiet. The audience will go further with you."

He acknowledges that as a career move it may be a difficult sell. The problem is that Steele is too much like Mort Sahl or Lenny Bruce -- two comedians who used extended monologues to comment on social issues. In today's club scene, that brand of comedy takes a backseat to mindless genital jokes delivered at a rapid-fire pace.

"Mort Sahl always said, 'It's not corporate censorship, nor is it governmental censorship, it's the intellectual level of the audience that more often than not stops you from doing what you want to do,' " Steele said.

"I blame America, because we really underfund education," said Steele, who one day would like to do work on KQED or National Public Radio. "I was in Amsterdam, and my waitress spoke four different languages.

"I do a joke about how there's a great number of not very bright people out there in America, I mean, read the statistics," Steele said.

"I say, 'I've been out there ladies and gentlemen, all across this country, from C-average to shining C-average!'

"But it gets a bigger laugh if I say, 'The song goes from sea to shining sea. I think it's more from C-average to shining C-average.' I don't want to have to dumb it down."

"I did a set in San Francisco last night and there's crazy people outside the club walking around, so my question is, why don't we care and how did these things happen?" Steele said.

"My big interest in the world is how did we get to that? How did we go from beautiful little downtowns with parades to endless sprawling suburbs? The costs are obesity and a war in the Middle East."

Although Steele said his 70-minute monologue-in-progress doesn't fit the "my daddy beat me, I became a junkie and lived in a dumpster" theme, it does take the audience on a tour of the issues that affect Steele most.

"This is mostly observations about America and Americans," Steele said, "more like an essay or essays, and a little like stand-up, but on heavier themes like gluttony, violence, laziness, tackiness and suburban sprawl."

His girlfriend, Allison Hatcher, gets a tad nervous while Steele fleshes out the order of things in his new show.

"His show is not so wildly different from his stand-up," Hatcher said. "No stories about his tragic childhood or anything. He didn't have one.

"At least not as of last night! It's all really still up in the air, which makes me panic, but he's used to it and perfectly cool."

Next on Steele's list of things to do is to teach classes on humor in the East Bay to speech-givers, comics and writers.

"I've read tons of books on comedy, and who better to teach than a guy who's made every mistake!" Steele said. "I know exactly how to put together a monologue, and I know exactly what not to do, to push an audience away from you."

Durst, who recently participated in the second season of NBC's "Last Comic Standing," said he believes a smaller venue is just the ticket for Steele.

"Johnny is the true heir to Lenny Bruce, but he does it from an everyman, blue-collar perspective, which more people should relate to," Durst said.

"And I think that seeing him in a small theater is the perfect setting, because you won't have to worry about him having to deal with bachelorette parties in the front row."

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